Talking About Our Families in Preschool

This week we are displaying some of our work projects from last week's Home and Family Theme.

For example, today we displayed our "Our Families" chart outside for all of the grownups to see:

This is always a kind of tricky activity, because we complete it largely with the information that the Little People supply us about who lives in their house.  Sometimes we double check the list of names with the official files, but largely we let them tell us what family members live with them.  

Before we start the activity, we cut the black paper rectangles and lots of white squares.  We do draw "face" circles on the squares to provide a starting point for the drawings.  I have to admit that this is against my nature to add anything to their pictures.  However, I was persuaded, and admit that it works okay like this.   It adds some structure, and makes the activity more meaningful when we compare and contrast all of the families later. You definitely can see the different stages of their drawing development in these little portraits:

Then we put their family "strips" on the chart paper from smallest to largest and talk about everyone's different families.  We discuss how some are big and some are small, etc.  We talk about the presence of siblings or grandparents living in the home.  After we discuss, we put the chart outside for the grownups to see.  Sometimes it is only then that we discover that "Roger" is not a sibling or the uncle that we thought he was, but instead is the family dog or cat.

Once everyone has had a chance to see the big family chart, we then take the families strips off and send them home, where (hopefully) the family discussions continue.